


In Sickness Or In Health

by Xairathan



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 09:26:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20776283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xairathan/pseuds/Xairathan
Summary: request: Nobunaga and Okita's interactions when Okita is sick





	In Sickness Or In Health

**Author's Note:**

  * For [corgasbord](https://archiveofourown.org/users/corgasbord/gifts).

> I typed this up on my phone between training seminars so if there are unconscionable errors that's my phone's fault not me.

Okita feels the tension in her chest a moment before it comes lunging up into her throat from her lungs. She twists herself out of Nobunaga’s arms to the confused sound of her name, clamping her hands over her mouth. She hardly registers Nobunaga’s hands on her back; her vision erupts with white, and warm blood floods the gaps between her quivering fingers. Okita squeezes her eyes shut, lets herself disconnect. She’ll worry about the stabbing chest pains and the cold sweats later— now she feels herself curl up, shuddering with the force of her coughs— and Nobunaga brings her right back, a hand hovering awkwardly on her shoulder, rolling Okita onto her back. Nobunaga’s worried face fills her vision, and Okita suppresses a groan, a trickle of blood spurting out from tightly pressed lips.

“Nobu,” Okita sighs, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I told you, I know how to handle this.”

“Yeah, but—” Nobunaga digs around in her pockets, bringing out a small plastic jar of what looks like candy. “Here, I brought you these! Emiya gave me some, they're fruit gummies, they’re supposed to help with your health—”

“I’m not sick—!” Okita starts to protest, only for her words to come out wet. “It’s a part of my Saint Graph!”

Okita shudders, feels herself come to rest in Nobunaga’s arms, which wrap around her shoulders. An orange candy pokes her lips, and Nobunaga grins sheepishly beside her. “Try it anyway?”

“It won’t do anything, I’m telling you.” Okita leans over, allows Nobunaga to press the gummy against her teeth. A wave of sweetness pushes past the lingering flavor of rusted metal, and Okita can’t help but smile slightly. It’s little relief, but Nobunaga has at least put a little thought into her choice of candy, for Okita recognizes the taste of strawberries a second later.

“So?” Nobunaga says. “Feel any better?”

“I’m pretty sure fruit gummies don’t work like that,” sighs Okita. She hadn’t noticed when Nobunaga’s hands found their way to her head, but Nobunaga peels off one glove to run her fingers through Okita’s hair, tugging gently at the knots wound into it.

“Should I get something else—”

“Silly Nobu.” Okita reaches up, feels blindly around until her palm brushes the back of Nobunaga’s hand. And then quieter, nearly unheard, spoken more by the tremor of Okita’s lips than her actual voice— “Stay.”

She feels Nobunaga settle beneath her, her lap doubling as Okita’s pillow— oddly warm and somewhat coarse, but not uncomfortably so. Okita closes her eyes, already feeling the pull of sleep offering a reprieve from the strain coiled taut in her chest. As she drifts off, she hears, or perhaps feels, the faint tremble of a gentle hum against her back: Nobunaga, the wordless melody of the Atsumori wafting into the air around them, carrying Okita off into the realm of dreams.

* * *

Company at her bedside is a new concept to Okita. She was cared for by her sister and visited only by doctors, none of them staying with her longer than an hour or two. Nobunaga has known of Okita’s sickness since even before they’d arrived in Chaldea, but for her to make a habit of visiting Okita’s room was something she never anticipated. She should have, Okita thinks— Nobunaga wouldn’t really be herself if she wasn’t inserting herself in spaces she had no business being in.

That’s how Okita’s room slowly, then officially, becomes ‘Okita and Nobunaga’s room’. Nobunaga often wanders Chaldea in her spare time, but somehow she always finds her way back home when Okita needs her— also usually bringing something new back for Okita to deal with. The first of these was a blanket stolen out of a vacant room; the worst was an entire ventilator wheeled from the infirmary, which Nobunaga got as far as plugging in before a bed came sailing through the door to put Nobunaga in the infirmary herself.

The most simple occurrences are when Nobunaga is already in the room with Okita. She’s in the middle of making them tea when Okita is taken with wracking coughs, and Okita thinks she’s just being helpful when she wraps her arms around Okita’s shoulders, propping her upright. When Nobunaga comes over and extends a bowl to Okita, she takes it instinctively, months of drinking bitter medicines ingrained in her body almost as deeply as the tuberculosis itself.

What hits her tongue instead is warm miso soup. Where Nobunaga got the paste from, Okita isn’t sure, but it chases away weary memories of a too-familiar window and a garden withering under the growing summer heat. Nobunaga beams at her, all teeth and narrowed eyes, and it’s the first time Okita feels her heart flutter in Nobunaga’s presence.

* * *

The weather outside Chaldea is always a blizzard; its inside is heavily regulated, down to the humidity, but even that can’t stabilize Okita once an episode has kicked off. She’s back from Oceania, blood mixed with the unshakeable lingering taste of seawater, shivering under the warmth of Nobunaga’s cape draped over her shoulders.

Nobunaga herself is naked, as she tends to be when she’s lazing around in their room. She presses herself against Okita’s front, the heat coming off her body throwing up steam from Okita’s still-soaked clothes.

“Get off,” Okita whines, pushing at Nobunaga’s stomach. Nobunaga refuses to budge, laying across Okita like a petulant cat across a sunlit walkway. “Nobu, you’re squishing me.”

“Medea says you need rest.”

“How am I supposed to rest if you’re crushing me?”

“I’m not! I’m being your blanket! This is the one time I’ll let you, so appreciate the opportunity!”

“You’re the worst, Nobu!” Okita huffs and lays flat, arms splayed out on either side. Nobunaga rotates atop her, bringing their bodies parallel. A well-chewed fingernail prods at her cheek, incessant.

“Hey, Okita. Hey.”

“What is it?”

“I know you love fighting, but you gotta take care of yourself if you want to keep going out.”

“I do! This is just—” Okita shivers, feels Nobunaga’s hand slip under her kimono and press flush against her skin. “—it comes and goes,” she mumbles.

“Then you shouldn’t mind resting while you don’t feel well.” Nobunaga tilts her head at Okita, her eyes strangely wide and focuses. “I’m just making sure you don’t run off and try to get assigned to another mission.” Okita opens her mouth to protest; Nobunaga leans in, too close, the heat from her body bringing pink rushing to Okita’s cheeks. “And don’t say you wouldn’t. I know you way too well, Okita.”

Okita sighs, turning away. She can’t move Nobunaga off her body; she isn’t sure she’d want to. She’ll never admit it, but she’s grown to like the weight of Nobunaga atop her, reassuring, a pressure on her chest that doesn’t come with a promise of coughing blood and struggling for air. Nobunaga grins, sensing Okita’s assent, starts to laugh. Okita, just to prove to them both that she’s only tolerating Nobunaga, promptly puts a palm to her face and tries to shove her off again.

* * *

Okita has stayed with the Shinsengumi until she could hardly stand. When she fell to her knees in the mud at Toba-Fushimi and couldn’t get up, she knew that was the end. Hijikata would see right through her; he did, and the only thing more agonizing than being told to return home was the actual journey back.

In Chaldea, when Okita falls, Nobunaga is always there with rifles firing, dragging Okita back to cover; if not Nobunaga, then someone else, but rarely is that the case. Okita’s started to suspect some secret agreement between Master and Nobunaga that keeps Nobunaga at her side as much as possible.

Nobunaga is no caretaker, and Okita is glad for that. The last thing she wants is to be reminded more of the last days of her life— but what Nobunaga brings instead is an excess of energy that Okita isn’t sure how to handle, and a smile that turns Okita’s stomach in ways she’s never felt before. She tells herself it’s because it’s contrary to her nature to see her former foe so happy, but she knows that feeling, a churning mass of anxiety in her gut. When Nobunaga wipes the last of the blood from Okita’s mouth and gives her a gentle grin, Okita can’t help but return it— and every time, she wonders why, but never stops herself.

It’s because they’re friends— that’s the closest Okita will admit she is to Nobunaga, in spite of everything. She can’t count how many times Nobunaga has carried her back to Chaldea or given her water, can tell apart the many ways Nobunaga breathes, from the sharp breath she holds as she readies a shot to the slow rasp of air over the slight gap of the teeth in her open mouth, the deep sleep that Nobunaga allows herself to enter beside Okita. In those moments, she’s vulnerable, much like Okita is whenever her sickness strikes. Okita finds herself wondering about that in the early hours where sleep doesn’t find her, a hand wound in the vast tangle of Nobunaga’s hair. Okita has had her share of comrades and close friends forged through battle, but Nobunaga she knows well far beyond even that. It’s the nature of the fight they’re in, their proximity. But even that doesn’t explain the ease with which Nobunaga carries herself around Okita, nor the semblance of living that they’ve found themselves in. Maybe this was just how life was for Nobunaga, betrayals aside, and what she brings with her much like Okita brings her knowledge of the sword to a battlefield.

Perhaps Nobunaga is not just a friend, but also the personification of what Okita needs, never got a chance to have— and that’s all Okita will admit to herself; anything more would be relying on Nobunaga far too much.

* * *

Nobunaga can’t be at Okita’s side at all times, and that can’t be more true than when the enemies they’re hunting are Lancers. A simple ember gathering outing ends with Okita overexerting herself and rayshifting back to Chaldea propped against their Master’s shoulder, a hand clapped to her mouth, her bracers gleaming with the splatter of her own blood.

“Hey, give her here!” a familiar voice demands. Someone lifts Okita up, their arms small but unflinching, and a well worn red cape fills Okita’s vision. Nobunaga settles Okita on her back, tugging Okita’s arms around her neck before hoisting her up, keeping a firm grip on her legs. “I’m taking her back,” Nobunaga declares, already starting away from the command center. Her boots clank against the metal flooring, ringing in Okita’s ears, the sound like that of swords colliding. At any moment, she expects a gruff voice telling her to get up, asking why she allows herself to rely on someone else for something as simple as walking.

“Put me down,” Okita protests. “I can move on my own, Nobu.”

“But it hurts you if you do, doesn’t it?”

“That doesn’t mean I need you to carry me—!” Okita squeezes her eyes shut, fingers gripping at Nobunaga’s collar. A cough wrings itself loose from her chest, a pitiful sound drowned out by the blood that accompanies it. Any moment now, Nobunaga’s tone will thicken with disappointment and she’ll tell Okita that she shouldn’t have pushed herself so far, and even still tries to expect more of herself.

But Nobunaga’s answer is just the slight shake of her head and the quickening of her pace. Soon enough, they’re in front of their room and Nobunaga is crouching to let Okita slide off. “Get yourself comfortable,” Nobunaga says, firm enough to be an order if not for the kindly sparkle of her eyes. “I’ll get soup going.”

Okita complies, if only so she doesn’t waste what little strength she has left bickering with Nobunaga. Another few minutes, and Nobunaga is pushing a bowl into Okita’s hands, her palms hot like the scabbard of Okita’s sword after hours under Kyoto’s sun. As Okita lifts the bowl to her lips, she sees Nobunaga’s coat fly off into the growing pile of clothes in the corner of the room. “What’re you doing, Nobu?”

“Heating you up, duh!” Nobunaga kicks off her trousers, slips under the covers, eyes gleaming as she stares at Okita, daring her to do something about it.

“Why do I even put up with you like this?” Okita groans, the bowl in her hands the only thing stopping her from covering her face.

“I don’t know, why do you?”

Nobunaga’s grin turns sly, and she has to duck beneath the covers to avoid Okita’s swatting hand. “Hey!” her muffled shout comes from under the fabric. Her weight settles on Okita’s legs; Okita reaches down to pull her out, and comes back with Nobunaga’s hand in hers. Nobunaga laughs, breathless and loud, and lays her cheek against Okita’s stomach. “You don’t have to answer, by the way,” Nobunaga murmurs. “I already know.”

“Know what?” Okita asks, puffing her cheeks out. Nobunaga only grins, shakes her head, wraps her arms around Okita’s waist. Okita finishes the last of the soup, sets her bowl aside. From under the sheets, a gentle vibration: Nobunaga’s humming again, and Okita feels her chest settle save for the ever-present tumble of her heartbeat, pounding in time with Nobunaga’s melody.

**Author's Note:**

> There's a playlist on 8tracks for a character that's 126 songs long it's been 4 days and I'm 20 songs from the end so that excuses the rest of the things I'm about to post today. I've been awake since 0430 hours. Limiters are off. I'm sorry Renee.


End file.
